Flange-type joints are widely used to couple two components together. Generally, each component includes an attached or integral flange. The flanges of the components are brought together and secured to each other to form a joint using various techniques. One conventional technique includes clamping the flanges together using a clamping device. Often, a sealing member, such as a gasket, is positioned between the flanges to prevent material from passing between the flanges. In certain automotive applications, flange-type joints couple together opposing tubes used to contain a flow of material, such as air, exhaust, etc. Accordingly, a gasket is used to seal the flange-type joint to prevent leakage of the material flowing through the tubes.
Many conventional flange-type joints fail to accommodate for angular misalignment between the coupled components. Often, typical flange-type joints are designed to couple together only coaxially aligned or parallel components. However, in certain automotive applications, coupling together intentionally or unintentionally misaligned (i.e., not coaxial or parallel) tubes may be desirable. For example, exhaust tubes may be intentionally misaligned to avoid or make room for other components within the exhaust or other automotive system. Alternatively, exhaust tubes may be unintentionally misaligned due to manual error when coupling the tubes together. Most conventional flange-type joints would not adequately function to properly couple together intentionally or unintentionally misaligned components.
Some conventional joints have been designed to accommodate for angular misalignment between coupled components. While such joints may provide at least some partial coupling of misaligned components, generally these joints fail to provide an adequate seal between the components for preventing material from leaking through the joint. Also, certain of these conventional joints may accommodate only a less-than-desirable amount of misalignment.
Certain typical flange-type joints for coupling together components often are susceptible to undesirable backpressure increases within the components, which can choke the system and result in undesirable consequences. Such backpressure increases can be caused when one component has a significantly reduced inner dimension (e.g., diameter) compared to the inner dimension of the other component.
Additionally, many typical flange-type joints that employ a gasket are difficult to assemble and fail to ensure proper sealing. For example, gaskets in typical joints are manually held in place during assembly of the joint, especially in vertically-oriented applications. Moreover, gaskets, which should be centered relative to the components, are prone to shifting out of center with the components during and after installation. Also, most gaskets used in conventional flange-type joints fail to accommodate for variances in component size, which can lead to improper seating of the gasket and leaking.